


Siren Song

by PureShores



Category: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Introspection, No cheating, Not an affair, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24127798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PureShores/pseuds/PureShores
Summary: Max and Georgia Goodwin are in it for the long haul. But when Max meets Helen on his first day at New Amsterdam, his marriage changes forever. He just doesn't realize it yet.
Relationships: Georgia Goodwin/Max Goodwin, Max Goodwin & Helen Sharpe, Max Goodwin/Helen Sharpe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 60





	Siren Song

**Author's Note:**

> So I have always been of the opinion that Max fell for Helen almost immediately after they met, hard as he tried not to. This fic explores that idea throughout the first season.
> 
> Please be assured that there will be no cheating or affairs in this story. It would not be in keeping with the spirit of the characters.
> 
> I own nothing recognisable.

Max and Georgia Goodwin’s marriage is far from perfect. It’s not a lack of love or care for each other, but communicating is a problem for them, and he’s prepared to admit that the fault is mostly his. He tells her he wants them to start a family (true) and promises that he’s going to put in more of an effort to be around more (he really does intend to.) Then she falls pregnant, and he’s overjoyed, and can’t wait to meet their child. Time passes. They find out they’re having a girl. They decide to call her Luna, after his sister. It’s Georgia who actually makes the suggestion, and it means the world to him.

The medical director post opens up at New Amsterdam. Chinatown is practically running itself by now. They don’t need him anymore. But America’s oldest public hospital, now that’s a challenge. There’s so much he could do with it.

He figures there’s no harm in throwing his hat in the ring, they probably won’t hire him anyway. He doesn’t tell Georgia.

A few weeks later, they call him for an interview. He goes. He doesn’t tell Georgia.

The Dean of Medicine himself calls and offers him the position. The promise he made to his wife is ringing in his ears, but he accepts it. He can find a way to be the medical director of New Amsterdam, and a husband, and a father. He just needs to be motivated and work hard. He still doesn’t tell Georgia.

When she finds out, she’s (rightly) furious with him. For reneging on their agreement, for going behind her back, for putting his ambition before the needs of their growing family. He can’t come up with a good reason why he did it, beyond his pride, and his thirst to prove himself. He doesn’t even know who he’s trying to prove himself _to_. But he wants that job and can’t bring himself to give it up. He begs her to stay, but she packs her bags and moves out.

He knows he made a mistake, a big one. And now she’s refusing to see him, not taking his calls, so he’s alone in their apartment, the silence a constant reminder of how badly he’s screwed up. After a few days, the silence is suffocating so he does the only thing he knows how to and throws himself into preparing for his new job. He’s sacrificed a lot for it, so he had better make sure it was worth it.

He requests minutes from the board meetings and personnel files. He gets copies of the annual spending for the last five years, a floorplan, reports on the unique features of the hospital, like the prison ward and courthouse. He trawls the internet for articles and editorials about New Amsterdam, and studies them thoroughly, trying to build himself a picture of the environment he’s about to enter, where it’s going wrong. What he needs to change.

He arrives on his first day at New Amsterdam with no fanfare. Just another guy changing in an employee locker room. Nobody can tell just by looking that he’s the new medical director, just like they can’t tell he has an estranged wife, an unborn child, and throat cancer, diagnosed not long ago. He hasn’t told Georgia about that either, because he just doesn’t know how. How is he supposed to explain to her that he might not be around to see their daughter’s birth or to watch her grow up? He can’t think about it, so executes his plan to shake up New Amsterdam straight away, fires the cardiothoracic department, sends the hospital into disarray.

And then, he meets her.

Elegant, but fiery. Beautiful. Commanding. As their eyes lock onto each other, something inside immediately reacts. An instant connection, a kind of heat. What the hell? It’s like his intuition is telling him _‘this one’s going to be important,’_ even though it can’t tell him why.

But it’s probably just a fluke.

He can tell she’s sizing him up, seeing where he fits in the hierarchy of medical directors who have come and gone. She is polite, but stubborn, and clearly used to being left to her own devices, basically using the hospital as a temporary base as she jets around the country, doing talk shows, and basking in the glitz and glamour of televised medical debate.

Unfortunately for her, he’s stubborn too, and he issues her an ultimatum. He wants his doctors in the hospital, doing what they were trained for, saving lives. He did his homework on her, like all the department heads, knows she’s talented, tenacious, and what she’s doing now is a waste of her skills. He tells her so. She parries that she’s making much-needed money for the hospital. Something stirs inside him as she refuses to back down, and leaves for her trip. He can tell that they’re either going to be the best of friends or drive each other insane. Perhaps even both.

He likes her. He very much hopes she’ll be back.

To their mutual surprise, she does indeed return, and agrees to pull back on her public appearances. He recognizes this concession for the show of faith in him that it is, and again, there’s a tug at his gut that he can’t quite pinpoint the cause of. She knows about his cancer. She is an oncologist after all, and should know the signs better than most. She wants to help him. All he has to do is let her.

It takes another day or so, and one little outburst on her part (which he suspects is only partly to do with him), but he finally says it.

“I need you to be my doctor.”

And then he’s looking into her eyes again, and she’s gazing right back, and _okay_ , maybe the first time wasn’t a fluke because all that weird heat is swirling around his brain again and he suddenly has the ridiculous thought that he doesn’t actually want to look away.

But he has to. He wants to be a good husband and a good father. And they have important things to discuss, such as the small matter of keeping him alive.

* * *

Fast forward a month and it’s like they’ve known each other all their lives. They spend a lot of time together. They ask each other’s advice over some pretty important things. It’s so good to have someone he can talk to, as things with Georgia are still so precarious. And she is brilliant, and driven, but she’s also funny and witty, and makes him think about things in ways he never has before. He is comfortable around her in a way that he doesn’t feel is always possible with his wife. Georgia has always listened, and sympathized when he tells her about his day, but she can’t truly understand, though she tries. It’s not her fault, she just isn’t a doctor.

But Helen is there with him, side-by-side on the front line, experiencing the same things he is, the same emotions. He can tell her things using all the complicated medical terms he wants and know that she’ll follow it. They have a ‘place.’ By unspoken understanding, everyone knows that the rooftop is their spot. It was hers first, but she shares it with him, and it’s nice to have a place to go for a little respite. Talking to her is just so easy because he trusts her completely. He has never had a friend like her before.

* * *

He wants his wife back. He and Georgia have been taking slow, tentative steps towards a reconciliation, they’re talking at least, but there’s still the cancerous elephant in the room that he can’t bear to tell her about. Helen pushes him to tell Georgia, tells him he’s denying himself a lot of support.

“There are no prizes for suffering in silence,” she says firmly, when the two of them are shut up in her office one afternoon, refining their beat-the-cancer battle plan. “Times like this are when you need your partner the most. You’re not being fair keeping this from her, Max. Tell her.”

He finally tells his wife in the middle of an empty dancefloor after a fundraiser. She collapses against him in horror, and he curses his stupid, cancer-ridden body for doing this to her, and to their child, and to him.

She’s in total shock. He has to half-drag, half-carry her to a cab to get them home, and they sit in utter silence the whole way. He feels…empty. Numb. If he thought he’d have even the slightest modicum of relief at not having to hide it from her anymore, he was wrong. There’s nowhere to hide from this now. He will have to spend all day at the hospital under Helen’s watchful eye, and then he’ll come home and have to endure his wife’s sadness and fear, knowing he has caused it. He will never be able to escape from cancer, not even for a moment.

It’s not until they get back to the apartment, change out of their formal wear in a daze and curl up together on their bed that she finally speaks.

“How long have you known?” It’s not the playful, melodic voice he knows and fell in love with. It’s flat, timid.

“A while. Before I took the job at New Amsterdam.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He can hear the hurt in the question, that he could keep this from her, that he has been carrying this burden alone for so long.

“I wanted to. I knew I should. But I just didn’t know how.”

“I don’t want to do this without you, Max,” Georgia is resting her hands on her baby bump now, and he wonders if somehow their daughter can sense something amiss, even tucked away as she is. She can no doubt feel Georgia’s distress, is she scared too?

“What am I supposed to tell Luna if you…?”

It seems she’s physically incapable of letting the last word pass her lips, and he feels no need to supply it for her. They both know what it is.

“I don’t know,” he says, instead. “But I’m going to fight like hell, so you won’t have to.”

“What if you can’t?”

To that, he has no answer, and then they don’t talk anymore.

They lie there, clinging to each other for dear life, Max stroking her hair over and over and murmuring meaningless words of comfort as she sobs into his chest. It’s many hours before Georgia cries herself to sleep, eventually succumbing to sheer exhaustion from the grief and the shock and the general tiredness that comes with late pregnancy.

As her breathing evens out and her tears finally subside, Max can’t sleep at all, even though he’s bone tired too. He’s too angry. There’s so much he wants to do with Georgia and Luna, and for New Amsterdam, and for the world in general. He still has a lot to contribute god dammit, and he feels frankly cheated by the fact that this has happened to him. Could he have somehow prevented this? Is this punishment? Has he been weighed up on some moral balance sheet and come up wanting? He considers himself a good man. A man who cares about other people. Who wants to leave this world in a better condition that it was in when he found it.

Where has he gone wrong?

He thinks about it all night long, going over every mistake he ever made in his life, until the sun begins to peek over the surrounding buildings, and yet he’s no closer to an answer. More to the point, he still has cancer. Moralizing over it isn’t going to change anything. He’s been burying his head in the sand for too long already. It’s time to take action.

* * *

When it’s time to appoint a deputy, there’s only one choice. He already runs most things by her, he trusts her judgment, and he genuinely likes spending time with her. If there’s one person who could liven up those godawful board meetings, it’s her.

The rest of the hospital already treats her like his right hand, anyway. He notices when they file in for meetings where she’ll be in attendance, the chair closest to him is left open for her. They let her speak first. He knows they look to her for guidance when his grand plan of the week hits a roadblock.

‘People seem to think I wield some kind of influence over you,” she laughs over coffee one day. “Clearly they don’t know you very well.”

He laughs along with her, but honestly, she does have considerable influence over his thought processes, certainly more than anyone else in the hospital. He always listens to her advice. He doesn’t always take it, but he gives it deep consideration. She’s willing to go along with him on most things, to push the boundaries, but she’s also not afraid to disagree with him if she thinks he’s crossing the line. If he’s forced to step aside, there’s nobody else he’d trust to be his advocate, and to implement all the plans he has for New Amsterdam.

Tomorrow’s his first day of chemo, and he decides he’ll ask her then.

Later that day, he’s got a meeting with Reynolds; he wants an update on how the new cardiothoracic department is shaping up. Reynolds sends a text that he’s got a tricky consult and he’ll be a few minutes late, so Max pulls up a chair in his office and waits. Outside he can hear the usual clamor of a busy hospital, but his attention is suddenly caught by the sound of his own name just outside the door.

“Have you seen Dr. Goodwin today? I want to ask for more nurses on Saturday nights.”

“I know he’s around, but you know how hard he is to pin down,” comes the reply. “You just have to hope he’ll just appear around a corner somewhere.”

The temptation is too good to miss, and Max is halfway out of his chair to go and give them the shock of their lives, when the conversation continues.

“Damn. Ah well I’ll just tell Dr. Sharpe next time I see her, and it’ll get back to him soon enough. He always has time for her.”

“Greta, stop. He’s married.”

“I know. He’s a good guy. And I’m not saying he’d ever go there. I’m just saying, if I ever caught my man looking at someone the way he looks at her sometimes, I’d be worried.”

“Get out,” says the second voice, doubtfully.

“Hey, don’t take my word for it, see for yourself next time you run into them together. Even though I’m not sure they even realize they’re doing it sometimes.”

Max waits until their voices and footfalls fade away, and then thinks about what they said. It’s true, he and Helen do spend a fair bit of time in each other’s company. And yes, it would be fair to say that he favors her, and isn’t ashamed of showing it. But the way they were talking, it’s almost as if they thought there might be something else going on...

He doesn’t really look at her in any special way, does he?

Well okay, there was that weird little frisson the day they met, and then again the next day when he asked her to be his doctor, and maybe a couple other times after that, when they’ve been embroiled in a particularly heavy conversation (they have a lot of those.)

Something heavy settles in his stomach as he realizes that all this sounds disturbingly like a pattern. It feels a little like guilt. And sure, she can make him laugh like nobody else can, and maybe sometimes he can read her thoughts by the look in her eyes, or the tilt of her head, but that’s because he knows her so well. Because they’re friends. Good friends. Maybe even best.

He’s a married man, and he loves his wife. He would never, ever betray her. He wants their family, he wants her by his side, to raise their daughter, to prepare her for the world. Their marriage is a little battered, but it’s still intact and that’s how he wants it to stay. He chose Georgia as his life partner and she chose him. He loves her deeply. She and Luna are his future, he knows it. As if something in him wishes to defy this unsettling idea that the two gossiping nurses have put into his head, the incident makes him even more resolved to have Helen for his deputy. She should have the title. To give her some authority, to make his professional faith in her absolutely clear to everyone, and remind them that it’s just that, professional. They’re co-workers. They’re friends. They’re doctor and patient. That’s _it._

* * *

She’s seeing someone. He’s seen them together around the hospital, laughing and joking like a picture-perfect couple. It makes him feel…. things. Unpleasant things. Not jealousy of course, because that would imply that he wants her for himself. Which he does _not_. But he’s noticed she isn’t at his side as frequently as usual, and she doesn’t text back as quickly, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t bother him a bit.

But she’s his friend and he wants her to be happy, and to be with someone who will put her first. Does Akash Panthaki know the things he needs to know to be a good partner to her? Does he know how badly she wants to be a mother? Does he know about Muhammed?

From the handful of times he’s spoken to Panthaki, he seems pleasant enough. There’s certainly nothing obviously amiss about him. But she deserves better than a just okay partner. She is extraordinary and deserves someone equal to her. She deserves someone who will worship the ground she walks on and will never forget how lucky he is to have her. Trouble is, he’s not sure there’s another living person on this planet who’s good enough for her. But this is not a topic he can comfortably broach with her. There’s a line between ‘best friends looking out for each other’ and ‘something else’ and he feels that conversation would be crossing it.

At the end of the day, he knows it’s really none of his business. She seems happy, and that should be good enough for him.

He’s leaving the hospital at the end of his shift one day, and he passes by her office like he usually does on the way out. He hears her laughter bubbling through the slightly ajar door. He loves that sound, and he pauses briefly just for the sheer pleasure of listening to it.

“You’re such a jerk,” Helen is saying, holding her cellphone to her ear, “but I love you.”

No question about who she’s talking to then.

At that moment she looks up and catches sight of him outside the door. She cups her hand over the phone, and smiles at him, and for a moment he has to catch his breath. Helen is beautiful. And he’s allowed to think that and not feel guilty about it because it’s not his opinion, but a fact. And that smile, it does him in every time. Akash Panthaki is a lucky, lucky man.

“Skulking in doorways now, are we?” she says, with a smirk. “Creep.”

“Can’t a guy say goodnight to his deputy medical director without being accused of skulking around his own hospital?” She rolls her eyes in the way she does sometimes when she’s dealing with someone who isn’t as smart as her, but thinks they are.

“Was there something you needed, Max?”

Her handbag is sitting on the desk in front of her, her coat is lying next to it. She must have been just about to leave. She’d probably stay if he asked her to, he thinks to himself selfishly. He’s sure there’s at least one file in his overloaded in-tray that she could help him with. But it would be dishonest. He can dress it up any way he wants, but all it would be is an excuse to spend a bit more time with her. And to what end? Georgia is at home waiting for him. His wife, who he loves and adores. And clearly, she and Panthaki have plans.

“Goodnight Helen,” he says instead.

“Night, Max.”

* * *

He’ll remember the night of the blizzard for many reasons. He’ll remember the blackout. He’ll remember Reynolds being rushed into the OR with the patient’s life quite literally in his hands. He’ll remember sending his nurses and doctors roving through the city streets in the bitter cold, in the hope they could do some good. He’ll remember cajoling his deputy back to work, because he knew it was going to be a long night and he was feeling like crap (though he was trying not to show it) and desperately wanted her there. He’ll remember insisting that he go on a call himself and more or less guilting Helen into being his partner. He’ll remember that weird psychic lady, convinced that her death was nigh. 

"You’re going to lose her,” she says, and he thinks she means Georgia, and no, no he isn’t. He simply refuses.

But she doesn’t mean Georgia.

Her words ring in his ears. “You and your wife are fine. There’s someone else. Someone you care for. Deeply. And you are going to lose her.”

He plays it off as though he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but he can feel a kind of panic settling at the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t put much stock in this airy-fairy astrology stuff, but he can’t deny to himself that his mind immediately went to Helen when she said that.

Maybe she’s noticed something he hasn’t by watching them interact. There’s no denying he asks a lot of Helen on a daily basis. Is she mad at him? Does she think he doesn’t appreciate her? So much of what they do is based around him and what he needs, what if she feels like he’s just using her as a means to an end?

Maybe he _is_ going to lose her.

He cannot let this stand.

When she returns, he pulls her aside, and she’s looking up at him with those big brown eyes and any hope might have had of expressing himself with any sort of coherency is lost. The words die in his throat (and it suddenly hits him that this happens a lot around Helen.) He isn’t even sure what he was trying to say, though it basically boils down to ‘please don’t leave me.’ And is he imagining it, or does she look a little disappointed, just for a second?

Then, they’re arguing about who is going to trudge through the snow this time, and he utters a sentence that he knows will haunt him until his dying day.

“I will go slow, and I will take care of myself _because I love my doctor._ ”

As he fights his way back to the hospital, he berates himself with every step. There are so many things he could have said.

“Because I respect my doctor.”

“Because I know you’re trying to help me.”

“Because I appreciate my doctor.”

But oh no, he in his infinite wisdom, went with “I love my doctor.”

He could see in her eyes that she was freaked out, and she had every right to be. What does it even mean? If someone else had been his doctor, would he still have said that? If she’d been his doctor but not his best friend, would he still have said that? Did he say it because the psychic’s prediction had gotten under his skin more than he’ll admit? Is he more attached to her than he realizes? What is she thinking right now? Is she scared? Disgusted? Mad at him even, for upsetting the delicate balance of their relationship by opening his big trap and throwing around dangerous words like ‘love’ without thinking?

Not that he thinks she feels anything for him other than friendship. He knows she cares for him, but she’s a caring person, and more to the point, she’s happily coupled up with Akash Panthaki.

And he knows that he wishes all the good things in the world for her, and wants her to have everything she desires, and she’s important to him, but not like _that_. Right?

The only upside to this turmoil going on inside his mind is that he’s so distracted, the pain his body is in from the journey has been somewhat muted. Maybe his body inherently knows that he doesn’t have her to lean on right now, so it’s forcing him to be strong. And if he dies out here, he wouldn’t put it past her to bring him back to the hospital and revive him just so she can yell at him for not listening and being so goddamn stupid. Georgia would be probably be right there with her if she ever found out about this. If she knew he was knowingly risking his life, she’d be furious with him.

The night wears on. He makes it back to the apartment, and then he and Helen both return to hospital, though he collapses on the way, so she has to support him down the last few blocks. She’s panting with the exertion of battling the snow and the frigid wind and most of his body weight. The worst part is, he’s too out of it to even feel guilty about it. He’s almost a little relieved when the power goes out just as they’re going to get into a discussion he’s not sure he wants to have.

As they deal with the fallout from the blackout, he forgets about it completely, but she does not. She corners him on their rooftop after it’s all over and it all comes out.

He was right.

He didn’t want to hear this. She’s dropping him as a patient. She’s making a decision for both of them, because she thinks he can’t. Or rather, _won’t._

He scrabbles around for something he can say to fix this. What should he do? Fall to his knees and beg forgiveness for wanting to save everyone? For finding another way when all hope seemed lost? He never realized that he was putting so much pressure on her, that he was upsetting her.

Why didn’t she say something before this? Or did she, and he just didn’t listen, because it wasn’t what he wanted to hear? That has a ring of truth, loath as he is to admit it. He has gotten where he is today largely due to his refusal to accept the word ‘impossible.’ And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he comes out on top. He gets what he wants, and he doesn’t have to compromise. But this time she is forcing him to. She is removing herself from the equation as his doctor and has already passed his file to someone else.

“But what if I want you?” he pleads, and she closes her eyes briefly like he’s hurting her all over again just by asking. Like he should know why she feels this way and should just accept that there’s nothing he can do to salvage this.

“I’m afraid that’s not an option anymore. Because we _all_ want you.”

In the deafening silence that follows that statement, it feels as though some invisible door between them he didn’t even know was there, has just slammed shut.

* * *

When Georgia returns home from her parent’s house, it’s to find him lying flat on his back on their bed, in the dark. She sits on the bed beside his head, and gently strokes his hair away from his face. Her hand is warm, and in that moment, he realizes how badly he has been craving her touch the last few days.

“I missed you,” she says. “I heard on the news that the whole city went dark. The hospital too.”

“Yep.”

“How did that go?”

He knows this is the part where he’s supposed to tell her the whole awful story. Where he lets her berate him for leaving the safety of the hospital to go on what might have been a suicide mission if Helen hadn’t been with him. Where they laugh about the crazy old psychic and her weird ideas. Where he tells her about the anguish he felt with everyone around him pushing him to make a decision, to choose who to save. But it’s a long story and he’s so tired, so he just tells her the most important part.

“It was tough. But we didn’t lose anyone.”

She chuckles lightly, fingers still carding through his hair.

“If there was a way to pull that off, you would be the one to find it,” she says, and switches on the bedside lamp. Hurt flashes through him as she briefly recoils at the sight of him. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror in the way in and knows he’s a mess. Pale, dark circles under his eyes, rumpled clothes, and just a general air of unhealthiness.

“Babe, you look awful,” she tells him. “You look like you’re barely even conscious. I thought you were supposed to be taking it easy.”

“Couldn’t,” he manages, through a long yawn. “Too much to do.”

Suddenly her expression changes from sympathetic to annoyed, and her fingers abruptly stop messing with his hair.

“You’ve got to stop doing this, Max,” she says. “Putting the whole world before yourself. Especially not now. It’s okay to be a little selfish right now. I’m not going to love you any less, and neither is she.” She gestures to her bump. “If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for us, Max. We need you.”

It doesn’t escape his notice, as she switches off the light and tells him to get some sleep, that she’s making essentially the same argument Helen did on the rooftop.

Make a choice, Max.

Choose who to save.

Triage. Prioritize. Recognize the difference between something important and something you just can’t live without.

It’s all a bit of a joke because choice doesn’t seem to factor in his life much anymore. Helen hands his file over to the other doctor just like she said. Dr Staunton doesn’t pull her punches and doesn’t let him get away with it when he disobeys her instructions. She puts him on stronger chemo. He gets sicker. He gets angry. He terrorizes his staff as an outlet for all his pent-up frustration and fear that his time on this Earth might well be up.

He doesn’t feel like himself anymore. He pushes himself through the hospital every day to remind himself that there is still life in the rest of the world. One day, he pushes too hard. He collapses in front of Helen, who immediately insists that she’s his doctor again, and he doesn’t even have the energy to feel any kind of way about it. Not until she manages to bundle him into a cab and send him home does he feel any relief at all that she’s back in his corner again.

He missed her. Even though she was never really gone.

That probably means something, but who cares now? It couldn’t be clearer that he is a dead man walking. It won’t be long now, he’s sure. He can feel his body starting to give in, and only hopes he’ll live long enough to see his daughter just once.

* * *

As cruel luck would have it, as though to compound his suffering a little more, Fate (in the shape of an ambulance crash) takes Georgia’s life first. So now his little girl may end up an orphan within weeks, while she’s still so young she won’t even remember them. He sits at home, a few days after the funeral, cradling his daughter, and trying not to think about what will happen to her without him and Georgia to guide her and love her.

His cell phone rings. It’s Helen.

“I got you into a targeted therapy trial,” she reports, breathlessly, the moment he picks up the phone. 

"An old colleague of mine is running it, she says your case makes you a good candidate.”

“Oh,” he says dully. He’s not sure why she’s so excited, it’s only a trial treatment. It may only buy him a few more weeks. It may not even work.

“Max, did you hear me?” she presses. “We can fight this. We can get you better.”

“And if this doesn’t work either? What then?”

“Then you’re no worse off than you are right now, are you?” she snaps, clearly annoyed at his lack of enthusiasm. “But if it does work, you’ll get your life back, Max. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

“So you say.”

He doesn’t mean to sound defeatist, but his outlook on life is rather bleak right now. His wife is dead. He is too ill to oversee his beloved hospital. His baby girl may well grow up and not even remember who he is. All he wants to do right now is wallow, and to be honest he’s not sure he can handle getting his hopes up again, just to have them dashed. “I’ll think about it. Goodbye Helen.”

For the first time ever, he hangs up on her.

Half an hour later, there’s a furious pounding on his door. Luna, who had been dozing in his arms, immediately wakes and begins to wail. He jiggles her around, trying to soothe her, and ignores the door. Whoever it is, they’ll get the message; he wants to be left alone. And then, it happens again.

“Max! Open the door!” Helen’s voice startles him. What is she doing here? He knows for a fact that she’s still got hours to go on her shift, and that she’s supposed to be in a board meeting right now.

“Max!” she yells again. “For the love of Christ if you don’t open this door right now, I’ll-“

He opens the door, and there she stands, chest heaving, eyes flashing with anger, fist of her uninjured arm raised ready to pummel the door again.

“You’ll what?” he asks, with mild interest. His sudden appearance appears to have surprised her somewhat, but she immediately gathers herself.

“I don’t know,” she answers, with dignity. “But you wouldn’t have liked it.”

Without waiting for invitation, she pushes past him into his apartment. He’s barely managed to close the door after her when she turns to him, glaring. She smells good, he notices, and is that a new pair of earrings?

“You know, most people trying to play hooky from work make a point of avoiding their bosses,” he says. “I’m not sure you’re doing this right.” If he was hoping she might soften at the bad joke, he was wrong. She doesn’t give one inch.

“I had a full schedule this afternoon,” she says, tightly. “Patients to see, meetings to go to, and I’ve had to throw all that away to come here and pull you back from the brink. Don’t test me.”

Max opens his mouth to respond, but she immediately cuts him off. “You’ll think about it?” she spits. “I offer you a chance to stay alive and you tell me you’ll _think_ about it? What the hell, Max?”

“I just-“

She throws up a hand to silence him. “I’m still talking. So for once in your life, you’re going to shut up and listen. Now sit.”

She points to the bed, and he meekly sinks down onto it, clutching Luna to his body. But he’s so weak, and his equilibrium is off, so he falters. He sees a flash of compassion cut through Helen’s anger, and she races forward to help settle him against the pillows. He can see so much in her brown eyes, pain, anger, sympathy. How he wishes she’d stop looking at him like that, it makes everything so much worse.

Once she’s satisfied he’s adequately supported she plops herself down next to him, and looks him straight in the eye. “I am so, so sorry about Georgia,” she says, gentler now. “And I’m not going to tell you that you can’t be sad, or mad, or anything else you want to be about that, but Max, you can’t give up. Not now. She needs you, now more than ever.” She offers a finger to Luna, who curls her own tiny fingers around it. “And New Amsterdam needs you, the staff needs you, the patients _definitely_ need you. And I need my best friend.”

She’s never called him that before, at least not to his face, even though he knows that’s what they are. He remembers Georgia jokingly calling her his ‘work wife’ on more than one occasion, and a pang of guilt and sorrow hits him so hard, he winces a little. She poked fun, but If he ever gave her any cause to doubt him, he’s ashamed of himself.

“That first day, I came back because I believed in you,” Helen continues. “And I still do. I’m not going to promise you that you can beat this, because nobody can promise that, but you can try. So be _you_. Be brave. Don’t make me- _us_ -say goodbye if we don’t have to.”

He could fall right into those dark eyes. Lose himself in them.

She extracts her finger from Luna’s grasp, puts her hand on his forearm, and squeezes it in reassurance. Her touch is soothing, and not for the first time, he wonders if he could ever have survived this year without her. She’s stood by him, supported him, thrown all her energy into saving his life. He owes it to her not to give up now. In his arms, his daughter squirms around, and curls herself up more tightly against him, seeking his body heat, and he doesn’t think he’s ever loved anyone so much. She’s already lost her mother. He has to do this for her. “

Okay, Helen. You win. Tell me what I need to do.”

* * *

And just like that, he’s a patient of Valentina Castro, who apparently now works at his hospital and co-chairs Oncology, though nobody is being very forthcoming about how that came about. And, miracle of miracles, her treatment works. He’s going to live. He’s grateful.

But then there’s Helen. He avoids her at work, dodges her calls, leaves her texts unanswered. He’s secretly glad she’s off doing more press tours and not in the hospital. It’s not her fault, but every time he looks at her, the bile rises in his throat. The grief and the guilt threaten to consume him. Because he can no longer pretend anymore. Something did change for him the moment they met. His marriage was never quite the same again once she was in his life. She grabbed his attention and never let it go. He started confiding in her instead of Georgia. He panicked when he nearly lost her in the crash as well. And while his wife was dying, he was in the ED searching for her. He wasn’t there when Georgia needed him most.

He didn't deserve Georgia and he doesn't deserve Helen.

And now he's got his whole life to live with that. 

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you enjoyed the story and that it wasn't too cumbersome to read. The length kind of got away from me a bit. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.


End file.
